The Incredible Tide (4 page)

“Well, Dyce is there now. He should be able to pry the truth out of them. In the meantime, keep searching. Try Area Three this time.”

“But that's where the compass always goes bad,” she reminded him.

“I'll speak to the captain about it. You should be able to check it before the fogs come. If there's land there, Briac Roa
could
be on it.” The commissioner paused and scowled at Conan, waiting in the doorway. Abruptly he exclaimed, “Don't tell me that's the survivor you brought back!”

“It is. And I certify him as physically perfect, strong, and intelligent. But he's rebellious—he doesn't appreciate his opportunity.”

“Ha! A little work will take care of that. But he's amazing! Such health! Come here, young fellow,” the commissioner ordered, “and let's have a look at you!”

Inwardly raging, Conan entered and submitted to the big man's questions. They were the same ones he had been asked before, but they were sharper, and his bullying questioner was far more demanding. Conan's rage mounted. Only the memory of the voice he had heard enabled him to hold his temper in check.

But suddenly he burst forth, “Why are you treating me this way? I'm willing to work for my keep, but is there any reason you can't—”

“Shut up!” the commissioner ordered. “You're a Westerner. You'll have to prove yourself before we can accept you as a citizen.”

“But I don't want to be a citizen! All I want is to go to High Harbor. The next time one of your boats—”

Dr. Manski snapped, “Don't be ridiculous! Soon everyone at High Harbor will be glad to have citizenship. If you'll take my advice—”

“I said, shut up!” the commissioner ordered again. Then he roared, “Citizen Repko!”

A large, pale-eyed, loose-jointed man, heavy-featured and almost beardless, appeared in the doorway. “Yes, Citizen Commissioner?”

“Take this young fool,” growled the commissioner, “see that he's marked and listed, then send him back for assignment.”

Conan was thrust into the other room and made to stand at attention while Citizen Repko, with obvious enjoyment, used a stylus and a paperlike piece of plastic to record his name, date of rescue, and other pertinent information. Finally Citizen Repko took what appeared to be a thick metal tube from his desk, and ordered him to stand against the wall.

“What's that?” Conan asked suspiciously. “What are you going to do?”

“Shut up and hold still!” he was told.

He saw that the other men in the room were watching expectantly while one end of the tube was placed against his forehead. There was a click as a spring was drawn back, then a sudden snap that made him gasp as hundreds of stinging needlepoints were driven into his skin.

He jerked angrily away. “What—what have you done to me?” he demanded.

“Look in the mirror,” said the wielder of the tube, smirking. “See how pretty we've made you!”

Conan whirled and stared into a cracked glass hanging near the door. On the forehead of the incredulous face staring back at him was a large scarlet cross. An indelible cross, for now he remembered that this was how the old Peace Union used to mark its prisoners—with a tattooing machine that drove the color into the skin.

He touched the blazing mark with trembling fingers and turned slowly, outraged. Even then he might have held his mounting fury in check. But the sudden raucous laughter of the four men watching him was too much.

All at once a cry of pure hate tore from his throat. Before anyone realized what he was doing, he had snatched the tube from the grinning Repko and thrust it against the man's forehead. It was done so quickly and with such force that Repko was slammed backward and pinned in a corner. In his rage Conan did not even think of setting the tube's mechanism, but it hardly mattered. The dye-colored needles were already protruding. The sting of them brought a howl, and Citizen Repko fell writhing to the floor.

Conan turned at the sound of angry voices. Two men seized his arms, and a third tried to jerk the tube from his grasp. He jammed it into the fellow's forehead, then spun about, using the tube as a club. It broke finally, for it seemed to be made of some light cast metal. But by this time there was no one left who felt like tackling him, not even the red-bearded commissioner who stood gaping in his office door.

With a last surge of temper Conan pounded the end of the tube upon the floor until it was beyond repair, then flung it in Red Beard's face.

He made no resistance when men poured in from the hall and seized him.

Six quiet, graying men marched him outside and across the square. With hardly a word they shoved him along the untidy waterfront to a half-submerged area, and over to a concrete cubicle built into a wall. The place looked as if it might once have been a sentry box. He was thrust inside—thrust almost gently, it seemed—and the small plastic door was closed and locked.

Through the narrow slits in the walls he peered curiously out at the men, wondering what they were. Surely not regular guards. They had spoken but little while he was with them, but as the group turned to go back he heard one of them say in a low tone, “Did you see what he did to Repko?”

There were soft chuckles, and another said, “Haggel got it too. Most of the dye was gone, though it came out a very fine shade of pink.”

Conan heard a quickly suppressed guffaw. Then: “Old Patch has been begging for a stronger helper. If Patch gets him, it will be punishment enough. I wouldn't wish anyone …”

The men moved beyond range of his hearing. He eyed them thoughtfully until they were out of sight. Finally, scowling and muttering to himself—a habit he had formed on the islet when trying to solve some problem on which his very life often depended—he began pacing in a circle in his tiny prison. Occasionally he halted and glanced out through one of the slits to study his surroundings. He missed very little, and already he had gathered a surprising amount of information since coming ashore. He was trying to arrange his observations into a clearer picture when he heard the quick scrape of plastic boots on the cracked paving outside.

His visitor was Dr. Manski. The black eyes in her gaunt, hard face were glittering with cold wrath.

“You fool!” she bit out harshly. “You utter, complete fool! Whatever possessed you to act the way you did?”

In spite of his uncertain predicament, a strange calm had come over him. “How would you have acted,” he replied, “if you had been in my place?”

“Why—why, I'd have used my head!” she snapped. “Don't you realize you've practically signed your death warrant? You can't attack citizens of the New Order and destroy valuable property without being punished. You'll probably be disqualified.”

Conan shrugged and wished she would go away.

“Did you hear what I said?” she thrust at him. “
Disqualified
!” He shrugged again.

“Doesn't the thought of dying frighten you?”

“No.”

“Don't talk such nonsense! Of
course
it frightens you.”

“No,” he said slowly. “I haven't been afraid of anything since—”

“Well? Since what?”

“Never mind. You wouldn't understand. You see, I—I was sent here for a purpose.”

She stared at him. “
Who
sent you? For
what
purpose?”

“I don't know yet. And I've already tried to explain it to you—”

She snorted derisively. “Rot! And don't hand me any more of that stupid ‘God' stuff, or I'll not waste my time ashore trying to help you. I must leave in the morning.”

“Why should you help me? What for?”

“Because the New Order needs you!” she flung at him angrily. “It needs your youth and your strength—but it's going to take all I can do to get the commissioner to overlook what you've done. You've hurt two of the men badly, and you've completely ruined the only marker we have. You'll have to practically get down on your knees and beg the commissioner's pardon. Even then—”

“I'll beg nobody's pardon!” he flared. “He'd better beg mine! What right has any of you to brand me like this? Are we at war? No! Am I a criminal? No! Was I brought here of my own free will to work? No! I despise the whole bunch of you. You're worse than the Peace Union. You—”

“Shut up and listen to me—”

“You'll hear me out!” he cried. “All this talk of rebuilding the world—who are you trying to fool? The survivors you've captured and branded? What a lie! You people caused the Change in the first place—don't tell me you didn't, because you did!—and now all you want is to run what's left of the world. If you had any decency—”

“Oh, stop talking like an idiot! Don't you realize it took
both
sides to do the damage?”

“I don't believe it!”

“But it did! Now someone has to put the pieces back together.”

“Only it has to be done
your
way—and with branded prisoners! You'd even take over High Harbor if you could, and rob everybody of his rights! Why, you're the dirtiest bunch that ever—”

“Shut up!” she ordered icily. “
No
one has any rights, not even I. Only the
state
has rights—the New Order. It's only the
state
that—”

“State, my eye! Of all the stupid ideas!”

“You're the stupid one! Stupid and ignorant. Of course we'll take over High Harbor—and soon! We'll be doing them a favor. They're entirely incapable of looking after themselves. If you could only see—”

“I can see how warped and twisted you are! And greedy!” He was shaking with fury by now, and hating her as much as he'd ever hated anyone. “Go away!” he shouted. “Leave me alone!”

She glared back at him a moment, her black eyes narrowing, her thin mouth hardening dangerously. Abruptly she turned on her heel and began striding away.

A dozen yards from his prison she hesitated, then stopped. Slowly she turned and strode back.

“You're so young,” she told him tersely. “Hardly more than a child. And so very foolish. But you will be judged as an adult, because you are so tall and strong. We need your strength, and that alone may save you.”

He opened his mouth to speak, then wisely closed it as it dawned upon him that she really was trying to help him.

“I've only a few minutes,” she said. “When I leave, I may never see you again. You may be disqualified, and driven into the sands.”

“The—sands?”

“The desert,” she snapped. “It's out back—hundreds of miles of it. We seldom bother to kill unless a disqualified person tries to return. Then he is shot.”

She paused a moment, and hurried on. “Now listen to me carefully. I am going to talk to the commissioner, and to others if I can. If you are brought in for questioning, do as I have told you. Don't act like a fool again. And remember—if you're allowed to live, it is worth working for citizenship. This is a better place than you think.”

Through the slit in the wall he raised questioning eyes to her. She said harshly, “If you can prove yourself as a citizen, you will discover how good it is. We all work together for the state, so there is no crime here. And, naturally, there are no police. But there is punishment—as you will find out. People like you must be taught that the New Order
always
comes first.”

Suddenly she gave an angry shake of her head, turned to leave, then said over her shoulder, “I don't know why I even bother with you. You Westerners killed my son, so I have every reason to hate you.”

With that she marched grimly away.

Long after Dr. Manski was out of sight, Conan stood peering from his prison at the empty waterfront, thinking of what she had told him and of all he had seen and heard. No police here? Then Industria must be the sort of place where everyone watched everyone else. You'd be afraid to trust your own brother. And who ran things? The commissioners? Then who were the middle-aged men who'd marched him out here and locked him up? They'd jumped when the work commissioner yelled for help—but they'd been secretly pleased over what had happened. They couldn't possibly be regular guards. They looked more like—well, doctors or professional men.

Then he realized that was what they had to be. Chemists, science workers, technicians of all kinds. Of course! They must have been here from the beginning, for it took people like that to keep a chemical city operating.

Only, nothing seemed to be operating very fast here.

The only signs of activity were far down the curving waterfront where he could just make out the stern of the patrol craft that had brought him from the islet. Occasionally figures appeared on the flimsy dock beside it, carrying boxes which they heaved aboard. His view in the other direction was cut short by the protruding wall of the building against which his tiny prison had been built.

Suddenly, as he looked again at the submerged area near him, he realized that an important part of the city must have been drowned by the Change. And wouldn't a lot of important brains have been drowned at the same time?

Some instinct told him that Industria wasn't all that Dr. Manski liked to pretend it was.

He could hear sounds of work going on all around him—but something was missing. What was it? Then he remembered that every large factory area he'd ever been in had a kind of overall sound, a very soft purr or hum. It went with big machines and power. Industria didn't have it. Could it be running on emergency units?

Conan scowled at the drowned section. If the city was running properly, automatically making what people needed, then life should be really easy here. But obviously life wasn't easy.

Why? The answer was right in front of him. The whole drowned section contained the wreckage of solar equipment, barely awash in the tide. The heart of Industria was dead. And dead with it, without a doubt, were the select few who might have known the secret of building a new heart.